


I'm Afraid of You

by triumphforks



Series: Character Studies [2]
Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Medical Experimentation, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23472307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triumphforks/pseuds/triumphforks
Summary: A character study written in 2013, for the purpose of demonstrating an understanding/interpretation of character for roleplay. It draws upon canon events and presents them from the character's POV based on my interpretations!
Series: Character Studies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688593
Kudos: 2





	I'm Afraid of You

> _ the seed of the prophet shall sit the throne... _

  
She had never felt as though she lived in the sky. It would be easy to imagine oneself as a Queen high above, watching from the eyes of Monument Island as the ants curried below. No, her comforts were a cage. Each day she draped herself in plumage and sat a pretty little bird, living amongst the clouds and yet unable to fly. She could remember calling out, crying as only a child could, the day she was left there by cold eyes and colder hearts. The sky had been drab, the clouds grey and heavy, and she had scraped her knees against the hard wooden floor as she screamed. Her hands had become numb after pounding the heavy iron door, chapped as they tried and tried to turn its unmoving handle. People had come, eventually, but their words were without comfort or song. They brought food, cold, and orders, colder. They paid no notice to the tattered state of her pretty white dress, only cleaning the cuts on her scraped knees and leaving nothing behind. Each time they came she called for her mother, but only found silence in answer.  
  
As the days had dragged on she had relented, sniffing back tears and trying to hold all her knotted feelings deep inside.  
  
The iron walls could not replace the memories of a mother's arms.  
  
The cold claws of the Songbird could not stand against the thought of a father's love.  
  
She had her books, though, and from those pages she painted the world. While her body was caged her mind could soar, far away from the towers of Columbia, beneath the clouds to the world below - the light would shine golden through the bars as she lost herself in the white of the pages. She read of worlds real and imagined, read of stories and adventures, of theories and speculation and learning all ensnared inside thick leather tomes. She learned to paint and sew, would create her own windows to stare at - ones with far more mystery and life than the drab clouds drifting beyond the walls of her cage. Slowly, her world began to brighten. She could sing, and play at dance; there was no one to bother her, except for the occasional visits from Him, heralded by the calls of the Songbird - and that scant warning gave her plenty of time to hide away her treasures and notes, the codes and lockpicks with which she played pretend, as though she was some secret spy escaping from the midst of the enemy stronghold. One day she would find the crack in the cage.  
  
And yet she was not content. As she watched, she had the strange sensation of being observed in turn, by shadows that disappeared every time she turned around to catch them. Her imagination - that's what it had to be. Her imagination that caused that feeling of dread, that supposed treasured possessions had been stolen rather than simply lost in the shadows beneath her bed. It conjured the demons in the night, after all, so why suppose daytime paranoia was any different? It was better to forget, and ignore, and pray the shadows would go away. She should not waste her time chasing fears.  
  
She would lose herself in exploration instead. In wondering what other lands the light that warmed her face would touch before the day was done...  
  
She couldn't remember the first time it happened, when she felt that itch. A flickering light had caught her eye and she had reached out wide-eyed to touch it. What happened next was something she had never expected; her fingers brushed the tear as though it were frayed cloth, and she had to grab the end and pull, force it all to unravel. That was when the wind burst through carrying with it the briny scent of the sea, tangling her hair and filling her lungs, and all she could do was laugh. Soon she could find the tears easily, feeling the air for fraying threads, and brought the world to her feet. She saw endless plains under bright skies, saw cities at night, their towers lit up like the stars, saw the depths of the ocean and a faint glimmer of light accompanied by the echoes of a laugh, notes of a song, the sounds of love and life.  
  
A caged bird she might be, but one with infinite windows, and all the time in the world to stare.

> promises of paris -

  
She had never thought she'd see her cage come crashing down. She had hoped, she had dreamed, but somewhere part of her had become resigned to living her life alone in the sky. That was before He came, took her by the hand, and jumped. Looking back, she had never felt so free; the wind tearing at her hair and her clothes and stealing the breath from her lungs, and even with the landing looming up so close she could scarcely feel terror for the excitement running through her bones. The water that rose to catch them was cold and salty, and even as it rushed through her she could scarcely find reason to fault it. She was [i]free,[/i] rising up to break the surface and drag in the fresh briny air, a laugh on her lips and in her blood.  
  
She had pulled her saviour to shore, trying not to giggle at the feel of the sand inching between her toes, clinging to her wet legs and the folds of her skirt, resisting the urge to run along the shore. It was like learning to walk again - with every step her stance shifted, slipped, yet slowly she grew more and more stable.  
  
She had meant to stay with Him until he woke, to thank him for what he had done, but the music called her and she was helpless to resist. It pulled at her ears and picked up her body, and soon she found herself with wet feet dancing across the boardwalk, spinning and twirling to the rhythm of strings and hands. Breathless, and yet she'd never felt more alive. The very air shone with a rosy glow, and all around her the world opened in to a scene of the likes she had only seen in her dreams. People all around, living and laughing. The smell of the sea mixed with the sweet bite of sugar and candy. She could hear children playing in the sand and the waves, young women like herself gossiping about this Mister or that. And everywhere the sun shone through the clouds high above, to cast living, moving shadows on the sands below.  
  
It was everything she wanted. So of course it all had to be taken away.  
  
She had thought her Saviour would be a kind man; he spoke to her with firm kindness, she thought, and he had the look of a rugged gentleman. He answered her questions, and didn't ridicule her for what she didn't know. He promised to take her to Paris, where the streets were filled with jazz and the lights of the tower sparkled in the night sky. He gave her a brooch, beautiful, a black bird on a stark field.  
  
He shot the man at the ticket booth, and filled the hall with blood.  
  
She had run like a frightened lamb, heart racing and all a fluster, and he had chased. Chased her down like a wolf, she thought, like a hunter after his prey. She began to doubt that kindness, and with it the realisation that the world was not as she had dreamed was hit home. She could still hear the fair music in the air, but it had a sinister undertone. What deceit, lies and death did those notes hide beneath their dancing tones? She wanted to run, and keep running, until the world ran out and she could go back to her dreams, where everything was safe, enchanting and beautiful. Instead, he caught her. He caught her and yelled and pulled her away from Paris and all he had promised.  
  
Still she ran. And still he had chased. A frightened dove in a cage of gore, hemmed in at all sides by greedy foxes and a hungry wolf, and she had nowhere to turn to. That was when her eyes opened, and she saw the stage open up before her. The sky was drenched in red, and the hand that reached out belonged to the man who drove her in to a corner. _Paris_ , it said. _I'll take you to Paris_. He was a killer to the core, her Saviour, more at ease on the battlefield than the beach, but in her frightened state, as she stared out at him from behind wide blue eyes, she felt as though she could trust him. As she stared she began to wonder at everything that had exploded around her - violence and death at all sides, yet she was unharmed. He shot at others as easy as breathing, but offered her his hand and sweet words of a more peaceful tomorrow. He was rotten, but perhaps not the whole way through.  
  
And maybe, just maybe, he really would take her to Paris. 

> two sides of the same coin -

  
He gave her the courage to do what she had always dreamed of, but not quite in the circumstances she had imagined. When she had first seen what was beyond the tears, she had been struck breathless and gripped with a mix of fear and wonder, unable to do anything but stare. As she grew more accomplished, doubt began to creep through - if she could hear the sounds, taste the air, what else might creep through her windows? She kept them small, and never set foot across the frayed edges of reality in to the wonder beyond. Doing so would be to invite disaster, she knew, disaster and the unknown greater than the kind that hid in the shadows of her cage.  
  
But here was different. It was dank and dark, and the scent of blood filled her to the point where she felt she could never again be truly clean. She fought to keep her hands at her side, to not gag or cover her face at the stench of the dead man slumped in the chair before them. He was more carcass than man, torn to shreds by pincers and pliers, the flies swarming over what was left of his face, blood still dripping, dripping, to the stained tiles below.  
  
_The same coin, a different perspective._  
  
She grasped the edges of the tear and pulled it, made it wider; more than that, she made it _real_ , so real that it felt like nothing to step through and in to the new world. Just as dark, just as damp, but no smell. No blood. No dead man with flies for flesh. And just like that, the fears that had been holding her back had fallen away - no matter what monsters were on this side of the window, she knew He could keep them at bay. She had seen enough carnage and death since falling from her cage that something so simple as taking a step could no longer hold her back.  
  
She didn't think of it then. It was a thought that came later, one that made her pause and wonder at the true cost of her freedom. Aside from the death that followed her every step, she began to truly think about her powers. Tears in the air had seemed like windows to another world, a better world, a world beyond her cage; and yet when she stepped through, and left the old behind, what became of what she left behind? It vanished before her eyes, as though it had never existed. She didn't know if these new worlds were real, or things she had created. She could never know if those she left behind were destroyed, and everyone who breathed along with them. The thought lay heavy on her soul, shaking her more than the rattle of His gunfire through the streets of Columbia. She thought of herself as the white dove, pure and innocent. But perhaps there was more blood tainting soul than she'd like to imagine. 

> blood on the hands -

  
She would never forget how it felt on her hands. The warmth of someone's life as it left them, draining through cold steel to touch colder skin. Her hands were shaking, and part of her was convinced it was someone else who had done it, who had plunged the knife in to the back of the other woman, someone else who was staring at the red staining her skin, someone else whose throat caught so tight she couldn't breathe. The sky was red, angry as her sin, and all she could do was stare.  
  
Even after, once she had changed and scrubbed her hands until the skin was raw, she couldn't shake the feeling. It had been so easy, to slide steel between ribs, and feel a life fade away. She had thought it had been for a good cause - she had thought she was saving a child, one still too innocent to have their life cut short for their elder's mistakes. But was that really it? Did that single act of judgement, the way she had lashed out in anger, make her any better than the monster whose blood she could still smell, could still feel clinging to her hands? Fear set in to her bones, but not the kind that was fleeting and brought on by nighttime shadows. This settled, gnawed away at her thoughts, and no matter how she tried to run it followed her every step.  
  
_Booker, are you afraid of God?_  
  
She was afraid. Afraid of who she had become, judge and executioner. Afraid of the impulses that gripped her. She knew nothing, and yet here she was, caught up in a battle for a broken city filled with people just like her - ones who wanted to live and breathe and walk in the sunshine, but caught up in all their fallible human fears and desires. Want. Need. A sense of security in superiority, when they all knew the true judge was looking down on his flock and weeping for what they had become.  
  
And yet He did not look at her with a judge's eyes. He looked at her like he understood, a sadness that extended to the soiled dove. He had wanted her to stay clean, she could see that now, and not become as tainted as the hollow soul she called her Saviour. He said he wasn't afraid, but she could see it in the way he walked and breathed, cautious and steady, unwilling to draw on conflict but ending it if he must. He was looking for redemption, she realised, and no matter how hard his words denied, it shone in his eyes. He said he wasn't afraid, but she had seen fear when he saw what she had become, drenched in the colour of fire and anger and death. She was his redemption, the one he sought not head-on but at an angle, and he was terrified of letting it become charred and watching it burn away.  you frighten them -  
When they were separated, she was strangely calm. Even without Him beside her, she could feel the assurance that he would soon be there again. He cared for her, had gone so far for her, a few steps more would be nothing. She could hold her fears at bay and keep together, knowing He was on his way.  
  
That was before the Silence came.  
  
The screams that drove her to her knees, followed by the stamp of feet through the cold and darkened halls, the hands that grabbed at her hair and her dress, dragged her from the shadows and in to their frozen white lights. Dragged her to a room without air or sound, her only window high and barred. The walls were like ice, closing in around. The dark smothered, and the chill bit at her bones. She could feel her hear racing, but took in deep breaths and told herself to not be afraid. She couldn't be afraid.  
  
_He'll come for me._  
  
She could hear the sentinels marching the halls, their steps a rhythm without the comfort of melody behind them. Cold. Mechanical. She could picture their empty eyes, stone carved and expressionless faces watching for even the slightest movement. And watching over them, the Silence. She didn't want to hear their screams. She shied away every time their light shone beneath her door. The days were torture, but the night - the night was something else. The men and their coats might try to pierce her skin, might draw blood and threaten more, but that was nothing when faced with the screams in the darkness.  
  
They caused her soul to rattle against the bars of her cage.  
  
A hand curled around the sheets, clinging tight. A face buried itself in to the pillow, trying to push through to a different elsewhere.  
  
_He'll find me._  
  
When they took her to the chair it felt like her breath had frozen in her lungs. She didn't know what it was they were taking her to, what they planned, but she had become so worn and lifeless she could barely muster the will to object. Before she would have fought, kicked, screamed for Him, but now she was nothing more than a shell. The chill took away life. The sleepless nights in a room guarded by stone soldiers sapped away the light. The hope she had clung to so desperately had become nothing more than a foolish girl's fancy, the dreams of the worn and beaten child she saw reflected in the hard black eyes of the ones who held her.  
  
_He'll save me._  
  
She felt the needles pierce through skin and in to her back, but she made no sound. She could hear them muttering and drawing back, but she couldn't even lift her head to stare.  
  
_He'll save me._  
  
Each thought came weaker than the last, a habit rather than a statement filled with conviction.  
  
_He'll save me._  
  
The lights flickered, and she began to scream. Her soul was being ripped from her very bones, dragged from beating heart and living flesh to the machine they had pierced through her back. She could feel the life drain from her fingers, pulling back from muscle and skin in to the Siphon behind her. It was like fire, burning through her veins and her lungs and the very air itself, and it never ended. It never ended. He wasn't there, he didn't come, he couldn't save her from the burning pain, he'd never even tried.  
  
Later, she felt like half a person. The men in their coats had seemed pleased, but she could no longer remember why that mattered to her. She couldn't feel the breeze on her face, or the cool relief of water sliding down her throat. Later, a man came to visit. She recognised his face, his voice, and they filled her with a dread she couldn't begin to explain. The words slipped from his mouth and in to her mind, a hollow chant like the ones pinned to the Silence's halls. The words buried in deep, clinging to what remained of her and refusing to let go. You are the lamb. Led astray by the false prophet. You are the seed of the prophet, who will sit upon the throne.

> _...and burn in flames the mountains of man _


End file.
